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Here we go again -- another hard drive goes missing!

Here we go again -- another hard drive goes missing!

It seems like I can't write enough about these incidents; it's happened again, but this time it's the Transportation Security Administration that's "misplaced" a hard drive. There's no need to panic yet (probably) because the drive may still physically be within their headquarters. Even so, that isn't much consolation for the approximately 100,000 TSA employees (current and former) whose personal information the drive contains. Just because the drive may be on the premises doesn't preclude it from having been examined and/or tampered with. I don't know how comfortable I feel with an agency that is responsible for my security (most of us know the TSA for their airport security functions as a division of the Department of Homeland Security) when they can't even maintain security within a "controlled area" at their own headquarters!

I wonder what their justification is for having that data on an external hard drive? Don't they know what a server is, or how to set up a secure network and communications?

When I worked in the defence sector there was a secure network and your HDDs were lockable and removable. If you left your workstation unattended you logged off, unlocked the drive(s) and put it/them in your MoD approved security cabinet.

If you transferred restricted documents or media to another employee you completed the appropriate paperwork, got it approved, signed for by the recipient and then filed it with security.

In that way there was always an individual who was responsible for custody and safekeeping.

Aardpsymon has figured it out mostly, but to open a wormhole you have to have a 15k spin along with the personal information of 100,000 people, then and only then will you achieve 1.21 gigawatts and the drive will be sent 4 minutes into the future and 87 meters... to the left.

Physical lock and key,and multiple employees involved and responsible for moving the drives. Nihil is completely correct on this. In fact there are uncountable ways of stopping negligence of this sort if only the ones running the show would implement them.

Until that actually happens, just remember when you hear a pop to your right, you still got about 4 minutes to duck.